Less than nine months after her dynamic San Francisco Symphony debut conducting the annual SFS “Day of the Dead” concert, Alondra de la Parra is set to make an even deeper impression on her audiences. As she leads four consecutive concerts with the orchestra, her wide-ranging repertoire — two nights of American and America-associated music, one all-Russian evening, and a refreshing Dolores Park afternoon that mixes Dvořák’s New World with some of Mexico’s finest — will be as rounded as her roster of top-flight soloists.
As if conducting Lucas Meachem, Joyce Yang, Sara Davis Buechner, Charlie Albright, and Chris Noth (Mr. Big from Sex and the City) weren’t enough, de la Parra kicks off her run with a July 18 Festival del Sole concert in Yountville, featuring the Russian National Orchestra, Joshua Bell, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. That’s five major concerts with two very different orchestras in the span of eight days.
Nor will de la Parra’s much-anticipated return to San Francisco and Napa occur in a vacuum. On Aug. 3, Sony Classical will release her two-CD set of 200 years of familiar and mind-opening Mexican music, called Mi Alma Mexicana (My Mexican soul). The set, slated for worldwide distribution, will receive its prerelease review from SFCV on July 20.
Equally exciting is the 29-year-old de la Parra’s impact on young audiences. In the six years since she founded the New York–based Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA), made up of young professional musicians dedicated to promoting the work of young soloists and composers of the American continents, de la Parra has built an entirely new audience for classical music. The POA’s final concert of its recent season in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall was such a sell-out that a second evening was added to accommodate demand. The repertoire, drawn from the forthcoming CD, attracted an audience whose average age was 30, and whose composition was 40 percent Hispanic.
Two months before the POA’s September tour to Mexico takes them to seven cities, including an opening night bicentennial celebration of independence in Mexico City that is expected to draw an astonishing 8 to 10 million people, de la Parra took to the phone to discuss the latest developments in her career. Our chat complements our initial interview, which can be found here.
A year ago, you mentioned that you strive to avoid being typecast as only conducting Mexican music. In light of your forthcoming CD of all-Mexican music, how free are you to do repertoire of your choice?
I don’t think that I have been typecast. I sometimes get a first invitation to do Mexican repertoire, as I did at last year’s “Day of the Dead” concert. If that’s my foot in the door to work with a great orchestra such as San Francisco’s, great. But I think my return is perfect proof that, after having done that first step, the reinvitation is to do far more than that.
I think it’s quite unusual that they would invite me back, not for one, but for four concerts. So it’s real exciting for me.
We loved you last year. The energy was so positive and wonderful. And there’s equally wonderful energy on your forthcoming Mexican CD. I was almost screaming with laughter when I put on Sobre las olas, by Juventino Rosas ...
Oh, that one makes you laugh ....
And, all of a sudden, the melody for the waltz “When you are in love, it’s the loveliest night of the year” starts playing.
Can you believe that’s Mexican? That’s what’s so interesting about it. Everyone knows the tune, and everyone assumes it’s a Viennese waltz or something like that. But that was the idea of the CD: to show all the different facets that Mexico is, which is not the cliché that most everyone has in mind.
The CD is the culmination of two years of research I conducted on Mexican music of the last 200 years, on the occasion of the 2010 bicentennial celebration of Mexican independence. With that in mind, I really tried to present a wide range of what Mexican music represents. There’s much more to Mexican music than the cliché people hold. There’s a huge world of music that hasn’t been performed, promoted, or heard. And these are old pieces.
Listen to the Music
Alondra de la Parra leads the Philharmonic Orchestra
of the Americas in Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony (excerpt)
It certainly is a wide range. Gustavo E. Campa’s Mélodie pour Violin et orchestre, Op. 1, was equally surprising. It sounds like European salon music. I loved it.
Yes, it’s great. It’s short and really cute. Also, the Wagnerian sound of Ricardo Castro’s Intermezzo to his opera Atzimba; if you listen further, there’s just about every other style in there.
Candelario Huízar’s Imágenes is another that I find really worth listening to. It is a really special symphonic poem. It starts like Ravel or Debussy, and then visits everyone! But somehow it all sounds Mexican, which I think is very interesting. Of course, he’s influenced by all these different styles and composers — Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, a little bit of Sibelius — but still the thematic material, the harmonies, and the use of the parallel third are very Mexican.
There’s a big influence of French music. We might be more influenced by French music than German or American, because a lot of our composers went to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and others.
That’s a great link to your concerts here, because Copland, whose music you conduct on both July 22nd and 24th, also studied with her. In Mexico itself, to what extent is the repertoire that you’ve put on these CDs known, and who knows it?
Of the 13 pieces, there are four best-sellers that everyone knows, like José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango, and Arturo Márquez’ Danzón 2, the Rosas you were singing, and Silvestre Revueltas’ Sensemayá. The rest is quite new to everyone except the scholars who manage the archives. Even connoisseurs and professional musicians may not be aware of [music on] half the CD. I didn’t know they existed, and I’m a Mexican conductor!
It’s really exciting, because the CD is coming out worldwide. My goal is that this music becomes part of the everyday repertoire of orchestras, programmed with Tchaikovsky and Debussy, and that it isn’t segregated to a Mexican program
What have you and your orchestra been doing in the past year?
I’ve been guest conducting a lot everywhere, and I’m starting to conduct more in Europe. This summer I’m doing a lot of concerts there. I just came back from Denmark and Spain, and I’m going to do some concerts in Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin again. This is my European summer, for some reason. I’m very excited about working in different countries and cultures, and learning. It’s been fun.
I’m just getting started there. I conducted a chamber orchestra in Berlin, [and] the Copenhagen Philharmonic, and am returning to the chamber orchestra with some really amazing soloists. I did a concert with the harpist of the Berlin Philharmonic, and at the end of August I’ll do one with Albrecht Meyer, the principal oboe. That’s really exciting. And I’m conducting festivals, as well. It’s a good start.
In the U.S., I’m conducting the Dallas Symphony in a subscription concert in the fall, and San Francisco, and other orchestras.
Are you doing the Mexican repertoire in Europe? I’d think that would interest people a lot.
The concerts I’m doing there so far are the “Eroica”; some chamber orchestra material like Bartók’s Concerto for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste; Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks. ... When I return next year, I’ll do some Mexican programs in Germany. Mostly it’s standard repertoire.
My orchestra is doing really well because of the CD recording process. You can hear how much thought and care there was from everyone involved. It’s a great thing to be part of. And our audience has grown ridiculously. It’s extremely mixed and diverse, and quite young, actually.
I remember in our last interview you spoke about being spread too thin. Have you been able to find a balance?
Yes. We just hired a new executive director, which is the beginning of the process. We were without one for a while, with some interim directors and a lot of change. That was really hard on me, because I had to do a lot of work, and it wasn’t musical work. But now we have a wonderful E.D. who is taking the lead, and so far so good.
How are you going to manage five different concerts in eight days, especially given that you haven’t worked with many of the soloists before?
It’s clearly the most insane four days of my life. Every day is a different program and a different rehearsal. We all had better be prepared. There’s no window for error. It’s going to be really challenging. But I love challenges like this. It’s fun. I think it’s going to be fine.